New 4″ iPhone: All But Confirmed

Thanks to some tweaks to the iOS Simulator application that is included in the iOS development tools, we were able to run the simulator at the rumored next-generation iPhone display resolution of 640 x 1136…The iOS 5.1 simulator displayed the home screen with a stretched set of four rows of icons…iOS 6 displayed five complete rows.

Adding the extra row for apps isn’t revolutionary or surprising. And that’s fine. I don’t think Apple is going to try to sell this larger sized screen as either.

Rather, I think it’s going to be what Apple decides to do with this extra space that has the potential to be a big reveal. These extra pixels, when running previous resolution apps, is the talk of the town right now. And if Apple can find a new and interesting way to deal with this extra space, alleviating designer/developer headache while providing extra value to the user, then we’ll have something noteworthy.